POINCARE SPEAKS OUT

Patea Mail, Volume XLVI, 29 August 1923, Page 2

POINCARE SPEAKS OUT

HAD. GERMANY WON PARIS, August 26. Speaking at Chassey, where he unveiled a war memorial, and at Gondrecourt, where he unveiled a tablet commemorating the arrival of the Americans, M. Poincare said that if Germany had won the war she would 'have been able to dictate her will, and thrown the whole world into chaos. France would have been the worst treated. Germany, during the war, made no mystery of her intentions. She always intended to crush France. Germany would not have treated the Allies much more generously. The Kaiser was violently hostile to Britain, and probably Britain's Navy and mercantile fleet would both have been destroyed. The whole of Europe would have 'been subejeted to Germany. These were not idle and improbable dreams. Several times the world had been at the point of their realisation, and without the Allies' union and the valour of their soldiers all these monstrosities would have been accomplished. Germany had not been asked to bear the Allies' war costs; she had only been charged with reparation for the material damage which she caused. Was that over-heavy? If Germany did not make an effort to do what France did in 1872 France would be forced to execute the threat Germany mad© then—" Pay us or we remain where we are."